Chapter 1

"Ugh..."

A long, shrill train whistle jolted Guo Shouyun awake from his slumber. Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, caused by a nightmare, he sat up and gently lifted the curtain on the window in front of him, cautiously peering outside.

At this moment, the train had just passed over the quietly flowing Heilongjiang River. Looking toward the east bank of the iron bridge, he could vaguely see armed Chinese border guards patrolling the riverbank.

"Brother Yun, where are we?" A young man with clear features, who was obviously woken by the sound of Guo Shouyun getting up, raised his body, rubbed his sleepy eyes, and asked drowsily.

"Just crossed the river, we've entered the Russians' territory." Guo Shouyun picked up his cup and took a big gulp of the leftover cold tea from the night before, then absentmindedly replied.

The young man on the opposite bunk was named Guo Shoucheng, Guo Shouyun's younger brother—his real younger brother, yes, the real younger brother of the original Guo Shouyun.

What does it mean to be "you in me, me in you"? Guo Shouyun now understood this phrase. In simple terms, it means your body houses my soul, and my soul contains your memories.

If this were in the past, Guo Shouyun would have disdainfully said, "A boring and stinky sentiment spewed out by some pretentious poet." But now, he no longer thought so, because he himself was a living example.

To be honest, although he had been parasitizing in this body for a month, Guo Shouyun still felt like everything was a dream. He couldn't understand how he, a convict sentenced to death for a massive fraud in 2008, had ended up in the body of a young man in 1991. What was even more incredible was that this young man was also named Guo Shouyun and was from Harbin. The most unbelievable part was that this parasitic Guo Shouyun had completely taken over the other's life, including the memories of a completely illiterate person.

From the memories he had inherited, Guo Shouyun learned that his predecessor had a younger brother and a younger sister, forming a small, unremarkable family in northern China. Due to the early death of their parents and their poor family circumstances, none of the three siblings had ever attended school, making them completely illiterate. However, fortunately, his predecessor, though uneducated, was very smart. Starting at the age of 20, which was four years ago, he began working with the first batch of Chinese merchants entering the Soviet Union. A year ago, he started operating on his own. The situation in the Soviet Union at that time was well-known: people there had money, even a small worker earned over 100 rubles a month. According to international currency exchange rates, one ruble was equivalent to 2.8 US dollars, or nearly 30 yuan in Chinese currency.

However, the only value of this money was to purchase goods. As for the banknotes themselves, they were no different from a piece of waste paper—no, perhaps even less valuable, as waste paper could at least be used for something.

At this time in the Soviet Union, there was a peculiar phenomenon: a severe shortage of goods, with store shelves empty. To buy anything, one needed not only money but also a "purchase ticket" issued by the civil department. In short, the people had money but couldn't buy anything, and large sums of rubles, except for being stored in banks, had no value.

Guo Shouyun's predecessor, with no educational background, naturally didn't understand the economic issues. The only thing he knew was that doing business with the Russians was easy and profitable. He only needed to know a few simple Russian phrases, such as "Kharasho" (good), "Ochen' kharasho" (very good), "Zdravstvuyte" (hello), "Tovarish" (comrade), and be able to count on his fingers. The Russians were very generous, to the point of being foolish. They would happily spend 40 to 50 rubles on a low-quality down jacket that wasn't worth 20 to 30 yuan domestically. They would spend over a thousand rubles at once to buy a whole side of pork that had just been placed on the shelf. They would bid against each other to buy a box of canned fish, fighting until they were bruised and bloodied.

As one of the first merchants to enter the Soviet Union after the opening of the national border trade in 1987, Guo Shouyun's predecessor indeed made a fortune over the past three to four years. A net worth of 1.4 to 1.5 million rubles might not be much in China a decade later, but at this time, he felt like a major tycoon.

However, all of this was nothing to Guo Shouyun, who had traveled back from decades later. As a highly educated, intelligent fraudster specializing in economics, the soon-to-collapse Soviet Union was a treasure trove of business opportunities. In such a situation, if he still only dealt in pork, low-quality canned goods, and down jackets like his predecessor, he would be a complete fool.

Life is about making a big impact. If he only thought about earning a little money to live a stable life, he wouldn't be Guo Shouyun. He had ambitions, great ambitions. If he were to reveal his ambitions now, it would probably shock the train off its tracks.

This time, when he left Harbin, Guo Shouyun brought almost all his possessions: 300,000 rubles in cash and goods worth nearly 300,000 rubles—cigarettes. Originally, he planned to exchange the cash for US dollars domestically, but this was still a luxury in the current domestic environment. The customs would not allow anyone to carry large amounts of foreign currency out of the country. However, Russian rubles were not subject to this restriction. Guo Shouyun speculated that the People's Bank had already noticed the potential crisis in the Soviet Union, and a large-scale devaluation of the ruble was imminent.

It was early February, and according to Guo Shouyun's memory, the Soviet Union would collapse in a few months. The newly established Russia would soon begin a comprehensive shareholding reform of state-owned enterprises—this would be the real disaster. Currently, the Soviet financial market had just opened, and foreign banks had only recently entered. They had not yet established a foothold, and the massive conspiracy to destroy a country was still in the planning stages. Therefore, Guo Shouyun was not worried that his savings would be wiped out overnight.

"Brother, what are you thinking about?" Guo Shoucheng jumped out of bed, putting on his leather jacket as he spoke.

"Oh, nothing," Guo Shouyun came back to his senses, glanced at his "younger brother," and smiled, "Wake Dongting up. We'll be at the station in about ten minutes. Get the things ready."

"No need to wake her, I've been up for a while," a clear voice called from the upper bunk. Then, a young woman in her late teens, tall and graceful, jumped onto the empty space in the carriage. Before she could steady herself, she pulled open the curtain and exclaimed, "Brother, are we there? Is this Bugerske?"

"What Bugerske? This is Blagoveshchensk, the capital of the Amur Oblast in Russia." Guo Shouyun laughed and scolded.

"What's with all these -skes? How can I remember such long names?" Guo Dongting shook her long braids, leaned her head against the window, and looked around before pouting, "It doesn't look like much, so small and insignificant, not even as good as Harbin."

"Hehe, you're right, it's not as good as Harbin," Guo Shouyun gestured for his sister to sit on the opposite bunk and smiled, "But here, we can earn money that we can't earn in Harbin."

"Money, money, money, all you think about is money," Guo Dongting, who was only 18, had been pampered by her two older brothers since childhood, so she was still quite naive. "I think you're almost buried in money and can't get out."

"Xiaoting, don't talk nonsense!" As the second oldest, Guo Shoucheng, though only 20, was much more mature. He knew that if it weren't for his brother's hard work over the past two years, the three of them would have ended up on the streets, their fates unknown. Because of this, he had a deep admiration for Guo Shouyun. To him, his brother was a god, a god for the three of them.